Vatican Ends Battle With U.S. Catholic Nuns’ Group

The Vatican has abruptly ended its takeover of the main leadership group of American nuns two years earlier than expected, allowing Pope Francis to put to rest a confrontation started by his predecessor that created an uproar among American Catholics who had rallied to the sisters’ defense.

Anticipating a visit by Francis to the United States in the fall, the Vatican and the American bishops were eager to resolve an episode that was seen by many Catholics as a vexing and unjust inquisition of the sisters who ran the church’s schools, hospitals and charities.

Under the previous pope, Benedict XVI, the Vatican’s doctrinal office had appointed three bishops in 2012 to overhaul the nuns’ group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, out of concerns that it had hosted speakers and published materials that strayed from Catholic doctrine on such matters as the all-male priesthood, birth control and sexuality, and the centrality of Jesus to the faith.

But Francis has shown in his two-year papacy that he is less interested in having the church police doctrinal boundaries than in demonstrating mercy and love for the poor and vulnerable — the very work that most of the women’s religious orders under investigation have long been engaged in.

Ending the standoff with the nuns is one of several course corrections that Francis has set in motion. He has also worked on reforming the Vatican Curia, the Vatican’s central administration, instituting tighter oversight of Vatican finances, and has created a commission to deal with sexual abuse by clergy members.

He has made no changes in doctrine — on Wednesday, he reiterated the church’s teaching that marriage can be only between a man and a woman — but Catholics worldwide say he has done much to make the church’s tone more welcoming.

On Thursday, that included calling an unexpected meeting with four of the leaders of the Leadership Conference. The four women were photographed in his office and said afterward in a statement that they were “deeply heartened” by Francis’ “expression of appreciation” for the lives and ministry of Catholic sisters.

“He met with them himself for almost an hour, and that’s an extravagant amount of papal time,” said Eileen Burke-Sullivan, a theologian and consultant for women’s religious orders and vice provost for mission and ministry at Creighton University, a Jesuit school in Omaha. “It’s about as close to an apology, I would think, as the Catholic Church is officially going to render.”

Francis has never talked explicitly in public about the imbroglio with American nuns. But he has spoken about creating “broader opportunities” for women in the church, and the value of nuns and priests in religious orders. He is a member of the Jesuit order.

A clear signal that the Vatican under Francis was taking a more conciliatory approach to American sisters came in December with the announcement of the conclusion of another, separate investigation of American women’s orders, which was known as an apostolic visitation. That process involved sending questionnaires to 350 religious communities and teams of “visitors” to 90 of them, asking about everything from their prayer practices to living arrangements.

Both of these investigations of American women’s religious orders began at the urging of American and some foreign prelates who accused the sisters of disobeying the bishops and departing from Catholic doctrine. It set off protests by Catholic laypeople across the country, who signed petitions and sent letters to the Vatican in defense of the sisters.

The news came in a brief report issued jointly by the Leadership Conference and the three American bishops who had been appointed by the Vatican three years ago to take over and overhaul the organization.

The report cast the process as one of collaboration, saying, “Our extensive conversations were marked by a spirit of prayer, love for the church, mutual respect and cooperation. We found our conversations to be mutually beneficial.”

It was a far cry from three years ago, when the Vatican’s doctrinal office, led by an American cardinal, William Levada, issued a report finding that the Leadership Conference had “serious doctrinal problems.” It said the sisters were promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” It also accused the nuns of spending more time working against poverty and social injustice than abortion and same-sex marriage.

The Vatican’s doctrinal office in 2012 appointed Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, with assistance from Bishop Leonard Blair of Hartford and Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., to spend as many as five years assessing and overhauling the Leadership Conference.

Leaders of the nuns’ group, which represents about 80 percent of Catholic sisters in the United States, insisted all along that the accusations were unfounded and that the Vatican simply did not understand the culture and process of American women’s religious orders, many of which emphasize open discussion and communal decision-making.

They decided that rather than take a confrontational approach, they would engage in rigorous dialogue with Archbishop Sartain and the other overseers, using the same process the sisters employ among themselves to settle disagreements and make decisions.

Ultimately, the report issued on Thursday said that the nuns’ group would take care in selecting the speakers and programs at its conferences, and have “competent theologians” review its publications. It did not specify who would select the theologians, and indeed, women’s religious orders are full of trained and competent theologians.

The report said the goal was “to promote a scholarly rigor that will ensure theological accuracy and help avoid statements that are ambiguous with regard to church doctrine or could be read as contrary to it.”

On Thursday, neither the nuns nor the bishops involved would grant interviews. The Vatican’s doctrinal office also would not speak. The nuns’ group said that the doctrinal office had asked all of those involved not to speak to the news media for 30 days.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said in a telephone interview: “Once they discussed and cleared the issues on the table, they published a joint report. That’s it.”

In a statement, Sister Sharon Holland, president of the Leadership Conference, said, “We are pleased at the completion of the mandate, which involved long and challenging exchanges of our understandings of and perspectives on critical matters of religious life and its practice.”

Archbishop Sartain, striking a similar tone, said in a statement, “Our work together was undertaken in an atmosphere of love for the church and profound respect for the critical place of religious life in the United States, and the very fact of such substantive dialogue between bishops and religious women has been mutually beneficial and a blessing from the Lord.”

The friendly resolution came as a great relief to the sisters and their supporters, who had feared that the Vatican could dissolve the Leadership Conference or take permanent control of it, said the Rev. James Martin, editor at large with the Jesuit magazine America, who wrote often about the conflict. “What you see with the sisters is true courage, which is being faithful to the church authority and also to who they are,” he said.

He said that there was no way to know how involved Francis was in the resolution, but that “as a member of a religious order who himself felt under the gun many times by his superiors, he would have some natural sympathy toward the sisters.”

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Vatican Ends Investigation of U.S. Nuns. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe